Interviews

The KDE Development Platform is an attractive base for developers of Qt applications. At its core, the KDE libraries provide job APIs for asynchronous processing, transparent network access, caching and more. The KDE PIM Development Platform also provides libraries for common transport and storage standards such as POP3, IMAP, vCard, iCal, MIME messages (email) and more. With Akonadi, the KDE 4 Development Platform is a complete framework for creating full-featured PIM applications with modern modular design, extensibility and scalability.

The Kontact PIM suite is a popular Free Software set of applications based on the KDE PIM Development platform, but it is not the only one. In the last few weeks Gregory Schlomoff has been working on an external, third party email solution based on the KDE PIM Development platform.

The Dot checked in with Gregory to see how it is going.

This week the Behind KDE interview is with a well known old-timer. He is the guru of kdelibs, but do you know what he does for KDE Sysadmin? Or should I say 'did'? Leave a comment if you get his old timer joke. Meet the one who moved files manually in the CVS era. Meet the guy who developed for KDE before some of you were even born. See how Charm and jazz play an important role in his life. Meet David Faure!

While it is easy to focus on many other strong points of KDE software, one aspect that deserves a closer look is the ability for it to support science. Back in July, you may have caught the Dot story on "KDE-Science" discussing the background and initial call for engaging the scientific community. Today we would like to highlight some of the advances that have occurred since then and present a real world example of how KDE software is already helping to support research.

As reported a few months ago, KDE software has plenty of use among scientists, who may use Plasma workspaces for their daily jobs or develop applications on top of the KDE Platform.

We interviewed Thomas Friedrichsmeier, the lead developer of RKWard, a KDE Integrated Development Environment for the statistical programming language R. Thomas discussed his experiences, KDE, and the role of KDE software in science.

In this week's Behind KDE interview, we talk with one of the unknown powers behind the sysadmin team, David Solbach. David is the maintainer of reviewboard.kde.org. However, there's much more to David than code review and contributing to KDE. He can also design and develop diagnostic blood analyzers and tell you what it was like to take a hit from the bursting of the dot-com bubble.

It is a while now since Akademy 2010, KDE's annual conference, came to a close. There were a huge number of blogs and articles about what happened and it is safe to say that the latest conference was a success. Many attendees noted how smoothly everything ran, thanks to the KDE organizers and the local team. The local team did an awesome job, not only during the conference itself but also during the many months of thought and hard work before Akademy. The Dot managed to catch up with some key players in the local team to get their take on the KDE invasion of Tampere and find out what it is like to organize such a large event.

In the second episode of the new Behind KDE series of interviews with KDE sysadmins, we meet KDE's "identity expert", Ben Cooksley - the guy behind the new identity.kde.org, which will be launched next week.

Ben is one of the leaders involved in setting up key parts of the new git infrastructure. Normally he's quiet and avoids publicity - another reason to put him in the spotlight. This interview even contains one of the rare pictures that are available of Ben.

You are now witnessing the kickoff interview of a new limited series of Behind KDE. This series will show you who the KDE Sysadmins are and also introduce you to the people directly around that dedicated team. In the coming weeks you will get to know the somewhat weird creatures that work night and day to provide all the KDE contributors with state of the art infrastructure and make sure the transition to Git will be made possible.

Troy: Peter, to begin, as a first time attendee of Akademy, what was your initial impression of the event?

Peter: Okay, there were a lot more people than I expected. When I arrived at the university grounds, I met a guy who was also looking for the entrance, and we started talking. This was the starting point for talking and it just continued from there - talking and talking and meeting people everywhere. It was really nice that I could talk about an issue I was having with KMail. Many other people also use KMail and knew what I was talking about.

Akademy is a great time to meet people and understand some of the exciting new projects and buzzwords in KDE. One project that has been generating a lot of interest recently is ownCloud, the KDE cloud computing project launched by Frank Karlitschek. We caught up with Frank to understand ownCloud better, find out about the current status, and plans for the future.